Mallory Moench
International multimedia journalist
Poetry attempts the impossible:
to articulate the inarticulable, express the inexpressable, describe the indescribable.
For me, it is a last resort and also a first impulse,
produced when there is no other way to say something, and
when there is no other way that something should be said.
The Finish Line
April 2013
Isaac Spared
I.
Eyes too serious for a child.
Under anesthetic yet always awake,
haunted but almost haughty:
the stare of a survivor.
II.
Trace the two thin lines trickling
from his eyes, delicate scars carved
in clay skin, cracking, soft. Look
closely, there, in bright epilepsy
at the base of the tree, in freshly
severed silver to its side, and you’ll
see ghosts.
The little ones buried beneath
layers upon layers of paint and
precious metal, paper-thin.
III.
Why was it he who was chosen to live?
On a ladder six feet under
the ceiling, the executioner’s ax
(dripping paintbrush bristles) poised,
in that moment paused.
For the boy has his grandfather’s face,
artist’s eyes staring into eyes the same,
the unrelenting mercy of self-reflection,
the farthest out of reach.
October 2012, published May 2013
2nd prize in The Idiom's Ekphrasis Poetry Competition
Based on Bruce Herman's painting QU4RTETS No. 1 (Spring)
We’re chopping onions for jambalaya at four o’clock
on one of those days where you can taste sunlight,
deep lung-drenching droughts of it, when
we hear –
two, no three explosions -
orchestral bangs in perfect rhythm timed
at the finish line
25 miles from where we stand
there is blood
bathing Boylston Street.
And all we crave is story –
to know what can't be known,
to make sense of what has no sense,
to realize what is unreal -
scraps of vision blurred
bouncing bright colors
on a concrete street and then the
POP
and legs crumble, hands rushing
slowly to ears deafened by the silence and
ohmygodohmygodohmygod behind the camera -
over and over and over again.
If this were another city, this too would be as
commonplace as cutting onions.
Today, 5810 miles away, the same
blood on Boylston Street
buries the back alleys of Baghdad.
55 bodies, dead.
In this day, we have become the same -
the same
woman making dinner as bombs crack
ceilings, screens, skulls, the same
woman because no matter what has happened,
we all still must eat.
And so
we pour measured rice into water beginning to boil
as 26 are wounded
we sprinkle parsley, saffron, salt, a dash of thyme
as 49 are wounded
we slice apples, crisp, swift cut of green and red
as 100 plus are wounded
we fill clean bowls to the full with
cucumbers, crisp,
a cloud of lettuce, moist, and
a jar of honeyed oil lined straight
on the fresh wiped table –
a perfect meal –
but 57 are dead in
Boston and Baghdad.
A(wake)
September 2012
You fit in the palm of
my hand, fine dust so light I fear
I will drop and lose you in the sand.
We stand, a broken-backed black snake
beside the salty tide licking
at our stinging wounds,
and shielding eyes
from sweating sun, on
the Reverend’s count of
1 2 3 we let you go into the sea.
In your wake we try to celebrate –
pull out the champagne glasses,
roll up dress pant legs and slip
off black high heels, bury
Uncle Marv alive in a clean-
starched suit (he, Lazarus arising, I resent)
a child-sized purple dress, too bright
for grief, strewn across the sand,
as Millie in a frilly bikini begs
me to go in the sea.
She is too young to understand, I
too tired to make her try, but my swimsuit
scratches under my slip; I promised too soon.
Stripped half-naked, thrilled and
terrified we race to shatter
the icy glass – braver
Millie pulls me
straight in, slivers of shivers
sliced under sticky skin – gasp –
a gulp of salt, and you are inside me again.
Baby, oh my little baby, breathe
lungfuls of bittersweet brine
and cling to a string
of white, wake
melting into
the turn
of the
wave.
For the Ones I Love, Closer to Death
June 2011, published in The Idiom December 2011
The first thing I see is red vermilion flowers.
click
and the slide projector whirs like the cicada’s lullaby.
It blinks, bleary, flickering light,
as a baby just waking,
steady now the click beneath my fingertip.
click
Every picture is summer awash in sunlight
blonde and daddy’s golden dimples,
bare leg bronzed and taut curls holding tight,
the frozen flash of a smile and pupils always shaded –
click
Now she shrinks lost in the high-backed chair,
cataracts ice cracked over lakes of frozen milk.
her breath whispers, haggard like crinkled pages,
the smell of aging ink pressed in the folds of her skin.
click
Only today I began to realize how close death is.
Breathing gently on the back of our necks,
brushing the edges of wakefulness,
crouching in the corners of our dreams –
click
in Granny’s whispered breath,
the folded pages of her eyelids
click
in threads of sugarcane woven
through my mother’s hair
click
in the shower as I circled my wrist with two fingers,
so thin it sometimes frightens me
click
in the car as we pressed up against red brake lights,
warning us we are close
click
and the slide projector whirs like the cicada’s lullaby.
it blinks, bleary, flickering light,
as a baby just waking,
steady now the click beneath my fingertip.
click
and the last thing I see is
red vermilion flowers.
Forsaken (Christ in the Tomb)
May 2011, published in The Idiom May 2012
Such a painting could make a man lose his faith
Dostoyevsky once said
as he stood on a chair in the Basel Kunstmuseum
and ran his fingers over the oiled flesh
of Christ in the tomb, a
Thomas, fingers deep
in the warm, sticky
gouge of unbelief.
Let me touch. I ached
but conscience reverence fear, and
the steady eyes of armed men
kept my hand by my side.
Let me touch. I ached
to run my fingers
over the hand already skeletal,
the ribs a shuddering ripple,
blood dried in the sliced flesh,
a rotting, death-pale green,
black around the holes unseen
(as though it were all in vain) –
I ached
to know if it were all in vain.
We stood in the same room,
Dostoyevsky and I,
that room like a smooth, dark womb,
and stared into the eyes of
Christ in the tomb.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
to believe
Thomas groped
the pulsing, bloodied flesh
and Dostoyevsky
the canvas dried and cool –
to believe,
to touch
I ached
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb
Hans Holbein the Younger
1520–1522